Should they stay or should they go? 
Tyler Cowen is in India, applying his economist’s mind to all manner of things. Today, he wonders how people would or should react to the knowledge that global warming will cause massive flooding in low-lying Calcutta. A taster:
| If the sea level rises considerably, the watery real estate of West Bengal will fall in value. Let’s say we knew that Calcutta would flood in fifty years’ time, how would the adjustment process work? Will people leave a dying city too rapidly or too slowly, as defined in economic terms? |
| Under one scenario, not everyone need leave the city. The city ought to shrink, but can survive at a less populated level. Furthermore then suppose that the stayers are better off, because they do not incur migration costs. Each person then will wish that others leave and he gets to stay. Migration will become a game of “chicken,” and people will postpone leaving for as long as possible, hoping to be the lucky stayers. This is related to the reason why not all auto workers leave Detroit when the plant shuts down. They are hoping they will be rehired if/when a scaled plant reopens; everyone waits for the other guy to leave. |
Frank Rich has some good news in The New York Times: “John Kerry’s defeat notwithstanding, it’s blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of ‘The Passion of the Christ’ should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.”
A number of years ago, for reasons that are no longer clear to me, I disdained the wearing of a poppy for Armistice Day. I suspect it was something about not wanting to be associated with Colonel Blimps and militarism in general.
Now I’m happy to buy a poppy and one of my sons wore one to school today. Even if I don’t agree with the current war, honouring those who fought in wars seems a good thing to do. With the 60th D-Day commemorations still vivid for me, it’s more than a good thing.
I heard on the radio yesterday, however, that some good people on the left are once again having qualms about poppies. A handful of people wear white poppies instead of red, as a symbol of peace. But it’s precisely the blood shed that is being remembered (my father left some — fortunately only some — of his blood on French soil in 1944). The poppies and the two-minute silence today are vital links with a past of sacrifice.